So yeah, this post is going to be about voice. Voice has always been a huge issue with me. Not necessarily with how a voice sounds, but with the absence of voice and what that absence of voice actually means. It’s because of this that The Little Mermaid is one of my most hated Disney [...]
Archive for the ‘Games and Rhetoric’ Category
She Has No Voice So I Must Scream: On Voice and Agency in Video Games
April 15th, 2013 
dr. b. 
Posted in Games and Rhetoric, Uncategorized 
Tags: cultural critique, diversity, feminism, gender, race 
5 Comments »
Analysis of Blizzard Inc. Employee Code of Conduct
April 1st, 2013 alexlayne This is a visualization based on word frequency. It has not been adjusted in any way. For my diss, I am using a two-pronged approach for analyzing gaming industry company policy. The first is a hermenuetic analysis and the second is a visual analysis. Using various methods of data visualization and postmodern mapping, visualizing company [...]
Games and Feminist Research Methodology pt. 1
February 15th, 2013 alexlayne It’s difficult to find provocative topics to write about each week when I am drowning in dissertation work. Right now I’m working on my literature review, which though often a throwaway chapter, is crucial to my argument. The lack of overlap between important fields, and the ways I suggest we intersect them, is at the [...]
Let Them Eat Dog Food!; Jonathan Blow on Games as Art (Again)
February 11th, 2013 dr. b. Nicole’s post on video games and art has brought up something for me that is a bit of a sore spot. And that would be Jonathan Blow’s latest whack-a-doodle (yes, that is the technical term) rant on Twitter about “art” games (defined seemingly as those made by him) vs. AAA titles (aka dog food). On [...]
Posted in Games and Rhetoric, Uncategorized Tags: art games, Jonathan Blow, video games as art Comments Off
All Accounts Fair and True: North Korea, Anne Frank, and COD: MW3
February 6th, 2013 dr. b. Bear with me for a bit while I get to video games. We need a little context here. I remember watching a prime time news show back in 2004 where “well trained” Korean teens exclaimed that the Americans were Nazis, GW Bush was Hitler, and that America must be destroyed to bring about world peace. [...]
Posted in Games and Rhetoric, Uncategorized Tags: game developers, north korea, propaganda, social construction Comments Off
Down the Rabbit Hole: #1reasonwhy Women Aren’t In the Games Industry
January 23rd, 2013 dr. b. Sometimes my brain works much like the horrible Bing search engine commercial where people jump from tangential topic to tangential topic based on keywords and loose connections. Today’s post comes from just such an idea jump that I experienced today. It started when a student in my Gender and Technology seminar mentioned Phyllis Schlafly and [...]
Posted in Games and Rhetoric, Uncategorized Tags: feminism, game developers, sexism, women in games 2 Comments »
A Break in the Clouds, Progress in the Industry *Trigger Warning*
December 3rd, 2012 Nicole Marie Holy shit. Somebody listened. And it wasn’t just an indie game developer with nothing to lose, it was a big name AAA developer. Kotaku’s Patricia Hernandez published an article yesterday (Nov. 30) on how the writers for Dragon Age 3 actually removed a portion of the game because of a group of women’s input. Apparently [...]
Posted in Games and Rhetoric, Miscellany, Uncategorized Tags: feminism, rape, women in games Comments Off
The 2 Slut Line: Promiscuity and Female Protagonists
November 26th, 2012 alexlayne For those who may have missed our last podcast, we had an incredible interview with author Christa Charter. In the interview, Charter narrates the struggle between portraying a female protagonist who is sexual, and likes her sexuality, and one who is a slut. She found in her research that there seemed to be a 2 [...]
On Games and Gameplay: Writing and Rhetoric as Bridge Building
November 12th, 2012 dr. b. In case you haven’t figured it out, I have a thing for video games and I have for as long as I can remember. Going all of the way back to handheld blips on a virtual (though painted on) football field that I fought over with my cousins. And now, three decades later I still [...]
To the Moon: On Love and Loss in Video Games
This post is brought on by two facts this week: 1) video games can be powerful rhetorical tools and 2) I lost someone who means the world to me this week. So if it gets a bit rambly bear with me. I had been playing through Freebird Games‘ Indie RPG, To the Moon, in the [...]